#36 Makeup

Thinking about the last entry, makeup.  October, 1965, 21st birthday.  I had my picture taken.  Professional portrait.  I was teaching high school math at the time, and I used to eat dinner at the diner around the corner from my apartment, which also happened to be the teen hangout.  I always had a crowd of students crammed into my booth (which I loved, and still miss, they were so cute and so ALIVE!).  The day I picked up the finished portrait, I took it with me to the diner.

"Oooo - she's beautiful!  Your sister?"

"No, that's me.  Tuesday of last week."

"That's not your hair.  Did you have it done special?"

"No, I went to the photographer directly from school.  It was like that all day.  My hair almost aways looks like that."

"You looked like that last Tuesday?  In class?  Hmmm," peering at my hair, "Yeah.  It does look the same.  Never noticed before.  But it still doesn't look like you."

"I put some makeup on."

"Wow.  Makeup makes that much difference?"

I think maybe that day I caused some headaches for some mothers of teenagers.  I also started wearing makeup more often.

Three years later.  Summer, 1968.  New hire with "a large computer manufacturer".  Programming school.  Overslept, no time to put makeup on.  First break, off to the ladies' room to put a face on.  

I dabbed a little concealer on some spots, filled in the blank patches in my eyebrows, applied some light brown eyeliner, brown mascara on my blond eyelashes, a touch of pink blush, and lipstick straight from the tube.  No base, no "sculpting", all pretty plain, nothing fancy.  No "made up" look.  (After all, I was still pretty Puritan.)  I turned around to find I had an audience - other students from the class, mostly new college grads who, at that time, wore little more than lipstick.  They were all in absolute awe, big eyes and the whole bit.  One of them said, and this is the absolute truth, "Wow.  I didn't know makeup could make such a difference!".

Sigh.